On the heels of starter Sean Burke allowing the first three batters of the game to all score, but more so on the heels of weeks of seemingly producing better contact than his putrid early April results would suggest, Andrew Vaughn got a cookie.
There have been other cookies sure, but here was one that felt special to him. With two runners on, Athletics starter Jeffrey Springs' changeup tailed back over the heart of the plate, and Vaughn golfed it over the White Sox bullpen to knot the game at 3, and signal that an old school slugfest was on for the night.
It's possible that the signal was misinterpreted.
For while the A's launched two more homers, and first baseman Tyler Soderstrom ended the night with six RBI and with only three fewer homers on the season than the Sox have hit as a team, it takes two to tango. A Lenyn Sosa popup that dropped in short center was the only Sox hit between Vaughn's home run and Springs completing five innings with no further damage.
Such a stretch of pitching tranquility could only be dreamed about on the other side.
For the third-straight outing, Burke was bloodied in the first, and the energy spent trying to swim out from the wreckage had him leaving early and the bullpen working late.
He was ahead of leadoff man Lawrence Butler before grooving him a middle-middle heater for a single, and Brent Rooker cut to the chase by doing the same with a similarly located first-pitch sinker. Not able to get Sodestrom to chase a heater up and away from him on 2-2, Burke reached for a big overhand curve that stayed middle and elevated, and the A's first baseman elevated it out to the right field seats. Such is the nature of baseball that two compelling battles with two talented hitters that ended with Burke playing his worst card at the biggest moment makes it look like he was simply getting hammered, but latter innings didn't offer a rejoinder.
A first-pitcher heater rumbled in at 91.7 mph down the pipe for Gio Urshela RBI double off the center field wall in the second, and Shea Langeliers' third inning solo shot to the moon was another slider that stayed thigh-high until suddenly traveling much, much higher.
Tasked with retrieving 17 outs from his bullpen, Will Venable opted for righty side-armer Penn Murfee to attack the soft, right-handed 7-8-9 underbelly of the Athletics' order in the sixth. But when No. 9 hitter Max Muncy stayed on a sweeper for a two-out double, Murfee did not have any fun with the Butler-Rooker-Soderstrom portion, with the latter unleashing a healthy batflip after launching a hanger well over the Whittingham Meats sign.
For bookkeeping purposes, it's worth mentioning that Opening Day top leverage arm Mike Clevinger pitched the top of the ninth. He walked the leadoff man, allowed a pair of missiles, and was responsible for a three-spot that tilted this to a season-high for runs allowed by White Sox pitching.
Bullet points:
*Burke triggered a brief visit from trainer James Kruk in the third, but it was quickly waved off. Even without an early exit, he hasn't completed five innings since Opening Day.
*Vargas doubled to the wall in the first, nearly legged out an infield single in the third (it was a tossup on review) and flew out to wall in dead center in the sixth. If you were generous, you could say he almost had a two-homer, three-hit night. If your central questions around Vargas are his power and how he'll adjust to drastically changing his physique in the offseason, maybe not.
*Luis Robert Jr. couldn't haul in Urshela's drive to the wall in the second, which went for a go-ahead RBI double, but he was able to rob a Brent Rooker of a two-run homer to end the fourth. If he had to choose one, he chose wisely.
*We'll try anything once, and he has neutral platoon splits for his career (albeit the K-BB ratios say otherwise), Joshua Palacios batting fifth in a left-on-left matchup led to two strikeouts. The latter of the two came with the bases loaded to end the third inning. He singled sharply to right in his first look at a right-hander.
